Recollections
by Zayz
Summary: [Sparrabethy Oneshot] Many years later, Elizabeth tells her son, Will Jr., about a pirate she had once known. My first posted Pirates fan fic, so please R&R!


**Recollections**

_This is a one-shot of Elizabeth telling her son Will Turner Jr. about this pirate she had once known. It's my first Pirates story that I'm posting online, and it's rather pointedly whispering Sparrabeth in it, so I hope you enjoy it anyway and leave me a review!_

"I want to ask you something," Will Turner Jr., Elizabeth's thirteen-year-old son asked his mother one night. He couldn't sleep, and he was rather bored.

"Sweetie, I really need you to sleep now," Elizabeth pleaded. "I'll let you ask me as many questions as you want tomorrow."

"No; I want to ask you one now."

"What is your question?" She was tired, and it was late; he should be asleep.

"I want to hear about an adventure," he informed his mother. "You had adventures, didn't you? They told me a little bit about it in the market place, and I want to know if you really did or not."

"Oh yes, I did," she said. "You may find it hard to believe, but I have had many adventures before I had you."

Will looked skeptically at her. "_You_ did?"

"I did," Elizabeth confirmed. "There was a man I once knew; I met him about a year before you were born."

"Who was he?" Will asked.

"He was a pirate," Elizabeth said. "His name was Jack."

"I know about a famous pirate named Jack," Will told her proudly. "His name is Jack Sparrow. He was the best pirate to ever sail the seas; I heard a few people talking about him in the market yesterday."

In spite of herself, Elizabeth smiled. "Well, this Jack was independent, single-minded, clever…he was everything you would think of when you thought of a pirate."

"Did you _love_ him?" Will teased, laughing.

"You know what? I did," Elizabeth said. "I never told him that though. I never even told your father how much I loved him."

"You loved someone other than dad?" This surprised him.

"Well, Jack was the closest I ever came to loving someone else," she said. "You're the first person I told about him since I married your father."

"Really?" Will's eyes twinkled mischievously. "Did you kiss him?"

"Well, don't get ahead of yourself," she said. "Let me see if I can tell you an adventure, like you requested."

"How did you meet him?"

Elizabeth laughed. "When I met him, I was supposed to be engaged to marry someone else; he was supposed to be the Commodore of Port Royal's fleet of ships. I didn't particularly like him, nor did I want to marry him, but my father had wanted me to. He was proposing to me, and since I was wearing this horrid, painful corset for the first time, I couldn't breathe; I fell off the ledge of the balcony we were standing on and nearly drowned."

Will began to laugh as well. "You fell off the ledge when someone was proposing to you?"

"Yes; but the corset was horribly tight," she said. "Anyway, so I fell, and I was drowning. The next thing I knew, I was on the dock, my corset had been ripped off of me, as with my dress, and I had a pirate standing right up in my face!"

"Was he a _handsome_ pirate?" Will found this much funnier than he should.

"He was," Elizabeth admitted. "He was a beautiful man, in his own right, and I saw it right away. He had saved my life, and my father wanted to shoot him; my supposed fiancée wanted to hang him. I saved _his _life by not letting them, to be even. But then he turned dirty on me; he forced me to put his hat and 'effects' on for him. He made me get much closer than I had ever wanted to get to him, and I loathed him for it at the time."

Will wolf-whistled. "Mom! Why did you do that?!"

"He had a gun to my head!" Elizabeth said. "He wanted to shoot me if I didn't!"

"This guy is great!" Will said brightly. "I wish I could meet him."

"Well, he finally let me go, and he ran off. Then, the very same night, his enemies came and kidnapped me. They thought that I was someone else, and they didn't realize it until much, much later. I met cursed pirates that night; they turned into skeletons in the moonlight as punishment for stealing some medallions that belonged to an ancient, greedy ruler."

Will looked at her skeptically again. "Mom, I don't believe in ghost stories anymore."

"That's exactly what I told the captain of that ship, Barbossa, when I was there," she said. "Then he showed me, and I freaked out completely; they were rather frightening!"

"Were they." Will still didn't think that his mother had met skeleton pirates, but he still wanted to know more about the crazy tale. "But what about Jack? What was he doing?"

"Well, that night, I was on my first fiancé's ship, the Dauntless, and Jack came to talk to me while I was there. I was alone. We talked a little, and that was the first time he told me we were alike. 'Peas in a pod, darling;' that's what he said to me. He also told me that he admired someone who was willing to do anything to get what they wanted. I think that always stuck with me, because I was pretty reckless in my decisions after that. I may have talked to him more about it, but we were busy trying to lift that nasty curse."

"Did the curse get lifted then? Did they find the right person?"

"The right person was your father, actually, and your father had come to save me," she told him. "Jack was a clever man, like I said, so he had convinced Will, your father Will, to come save me. Jack wanted the ship that Barbossa had; it had once been his – the Black Pearl. Jack knew that if he gave Barbossa your father, then he could probably get his way. It was perfect; they came to get me just in the nick of time, Jack and Will lifted the curse, and I was safe."

"Did this Barbossa and dad sword-fight?" Will asked eagerly.

"No," Elizabeth said. "Sorry. Jack did; Jack sword-fought with Barbossa and killed him. Your father admitted that he loved me that afternoon, after we saved Jack from getting hung, and that's when he first proposed to me."

"That's nice, but where's the blood and gore?" Will demanded. "I don't want a love story, mom."

"Let me get to it," Elizabeth said. "Relax; that wasn't all we did."

"Well, then get on with it."

"Anyway, so the day I was about to marry your father, he was arrested for helping Jack, and they wanted to hang us both for the crime."

"They wanted to hang you for helping the best pirate other than Jack Sparrow?" Will inquired incredulously. "That's crazy!"

"That's what we said," Elizabeth agreed. "My father tried to save me by sending me away, but it didn't work; he was caught and I escaped to another ship of pirates. I led them to the port Tortuga, and there, I met Jack. He didn't recognize me; I was dressed as a man at that time, and all I wanted to do was find your father.

"Now, the thing to remember with Jack is that he will bend everyone to follow his own plan," she went on. "He lied to me, and sweet-talked me onto his ship. He even proposed to me on that ship; I had told him I wanted to be married, since I hadn't yet married your father, and he offered to do it himself!"

"Why didn't you say yes?" Will howled. "This guy sounds amazing!"

"I was revolted," she said. "Though I was fast losing it, I was still a lady at that time, and I didn't want to marry someone like him. He told me about curiosity that day…he said that one day, I would be curious as to how Jack lived. He said that eventually, I would become a pirate, in short; I would want independence. In turn, I told him that one day, he would want to do the right thing; I believed he was a good man, and I still do believe that. He didn't believe me though; he laughed at me. Still, he and I talked about desire, curiosity, and about how he was truly good at heart…I nearly kissed him during that life-changing conversation."

"Did you?"

"No," she said, regretful. "I probably would have let him if he did, but he stopped himself."

"Mom, how do you get all these men all over you? What is it, three men now that wanted to marry you?" He was amused, but incredulous.

"I was a pretty girl," Elizabeth said, grinning. "In fact, I was the _only_ girl among them; they fell for me because I was something new to look at. At least, that's what I thought."

"Did Jack really love you?" Will frowned. "He doesn't seem to be the type to fall in love with someone for real."

"That's what I thought too," she said. "But after a ferocious battle with a Kraken, I kissed him. When I kissed him, I knew that we loved each other; it was one of the best and worst things I had ever done."

"Wait, what?" Will was confused now. "You _kissed_ Jack and you think it's the worst thing you ever did?"

"Yes and no; I hadn't known how infatuated I was with him until that day, and I realized for the first time, with clarity, that I loved Jack," Elizabeth explained. "It was also the worst because your father saw me do it. He thought I loved him as well, and was naturally upset; not only that, but I kissed Jack so that I could kill him."

"I must have missed something, mom, because you're not making any sense."

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "Let me back up a little. Now, there was this sea monster, the Kraken. It was controlled by Davy Jones, who was the ruler of the seas back then."

"I've heard of him," Will said. "Didn't he die?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "I was there, and I'll tell you about it; just hang on for a moment. Anyway, so Davy Jones had made a deal with Jack ages ago; if Jack got his ship, the Black Pearl, for thirteen years, then Jack would have to serve Jones for a hundred years afterwards. Jack's time was up, and he didn't want to serve the punishment. He wanted to try negotiating his way out of the whole mess by using Will and me; Jack didn't do a good job though, because it was constantly after us, and it was a chase for our lives."

"Wow," Will breathed, his eyes round and excited. "What happened next?"

"Well, I got smart near the end, and realized that the Kraken wanted Jack and the Pearl rather than Will, the crew, and me; Jack never specifically told us what was going on," she said. "So I decided to go to some desperate measures; I kissed him and chained him to the mast. When I stopped kissing him and he realized what I had been doing, he smirked at me as though he was amused. I hated it; I had just done the most daring thing of my life, and he was just looking at me as though I had just given him the entertainment of a lifetime! I told him it wasn't us; it was just to save us all from the Kraken. He called me a pirate. God, I couldn't even tell you how much that cut into me. A pirate was the very last thing a person like me would be, and here was one, telling me that! It wasn't just the word; he said it like it was almost a compliment. I couldn't think straight; I had just kissed him, and now I was being called a pirate, so I just left him to die then. The pain of it afterwards…it was indescribable."

"Shame on you, Mom; why'd you have to go and kill this guy? He obviously changed your life and whatnot!" Will was outraged; his mother was the murderess of such an amazing pirate?!

"I felt horrible about it," she admitted. "I had made such a mess. Your father didn't trust me, I myself didn't trust me, and all I wanted was to see Jack all right again. He was in Davy Jones's locker, which is the most godforsaken desert imaginable. It's just miles upon miles of empty sand, and when I knew that was where I had sent Jack, it became a matter of great urgency that I get him back to the real world – back to me."

"Finally, a rational thought," Will muttered. "Did you get him back?"

"Yes, we did," Elizabeth said, smiling as she remembered. "Tia Dalma, a witch I had met for the first time the night I killed Jack, had brought Barbossa back from the dead somehow with her magic. We all set out to find Jack at the end of the world by using maps belonging to Singapore's Pirate Lord, Sao Feng. He is now dead, but he provided a ship, a crew, and a way to our destination. Jack was completely sun baked by the time we found him, and he wasn't exactly pleased to see me, but we got him back to the world of the living.

"Thank goodness," said Will with relief. "What happened when you got Jack back?"

"Well, we had to fight the East India Trading Company, the people trying to vanquish all the pirates," she said. "The things we had to do…that witch, Tia Dalma, happened to be a goddess in human form, and we had to set her free as a hope to defeat the Company. We had to switch ships a lot, made bargains that made or broke us, and in the middle of all that, Will and I had no idea what the other felt. Will made the decision to betray us all, but he never told me. I had kissed Jack without telling him why. We couldn't trust each other, and we knew our time was limited, because we could be dead within a few minutes."

"What did you do, finally?" Will asked. "It seems like you had made a bigger mess than what you started with."

"We knew that the person who stabbed Davy Jones would take over his job for the rest of eternity – ferrying dead people to the other world," Elizabeth explained. "Jack wanted to do it, because his fantasy was living forever. Will wanted to do it to avenge his father, but at the same time, he wanted to be with me, and that posed a problem. We were trying to stab Jones's heart in the middle of a storm and a battle between every pirate on the sea and every East India Trading Company man. It was insanity that night. Will and I somehow married on that ship while fighting off sea monsters. What a wedding, right? Anyway, we were fighting Jones because Jack had his heart in his hand. But Jones took his sword, and instead of going for Jack, he went for Will."

"He tried to murder Dad?" Will cried, aghast. "But he couldn't have! Dad is alive right now!"

"Dad is only alive because Jack put a knife in his hand and made him stab Davy's heart," said Elizabeth, sighing as she remembered. "I was hysterical; I was trying to keep Will alive, and he was dying, right in my arms. Davy Jones died and fell to the sea, but it was Will who had to take his place. When the crew was about to cut his heart out, I had just about lost my mind with worry. But Jack saved me; like he has so many times in so many ways…he pulled me off of Will's with quite some difficulty and took me on his parachute to the calmer sea away from the battle. I don't quite remember the detail of what happened around that time though; everything happened at once, and all that was occupying my mind was my poor husband, in the hands of fish-heads."

"That must have been cool, flying with Jack," Will remarked. "Was it? What about Dad? Was he okay?"

"He held onto me on that parachute," she told him. "It was the first time that day I had felt safe. I was so miserable, and he was just…he was exactly what I wanted. I hadn't been able to talk to him properly at all, and now here he was, close enough to kiss, and taking me to safety while my husband was being carted off to an underwater ship. The emotion up there was overwhelming, and for the very first time, I saw Jack looking upset. He had been Will's advisor and teacher, in a way, and it hurt him to see Will go too. We said nothing to each other while we were in the air, but his eyes told volumes. I'll never forget that."

"When you got back to the ship, did you tell him all that?" he inquired. "Did you tell him how you felt?"

"No," she admitted. "When we got back to the ship, I bid everyone good-bye. I told Jack that it wouldn't have worked between us. It was a lie, but I was married; what could I say? I loved him and wished that he'd just take me away and stay with me forever? He just smirked at me in the most disbelieving, but adorable way, and told me to keep telling myself that. Darling, he called me. I loved it when he called me that. I wanted to kiss him just once more time before I never saw him again, but he stopped me. 'Once was quite enough' was what he said to me."

Will laughed. "Nice, Mom. Were you that…intense?"

"I suppose, but then again, the last time I kissed him, I had sent him to his death, which was his one big fear."

"True," Will said. "I probably wouldn't have forgiven you for that either. But he loved or you something, didn't he?"

"He might have, but it wasn't really in his nature," said Elizabeth. "He never really loved anyone that way. He liked being alone, and making his own way in the world. He did make me the Pirate King though; it was because of his vote that I became a King and that we won the war against the East India Trading Company."

"Wow," Will said, his eyes round. "You are a Pirate King? Because of Jack? That's awesome!"

"Jack always seemed to know what was best for me," she said thoughtfully. "I felt close to him, as though he was always on my side, when in reality, he wasn't. Not all the time. It was strange, and I still don't know how I felt about him, but I might have loved him."

"Do you wish you had married him instead of Dad?" This seemed to worry Will, which it would; it was a little nerve-racking to have your mother wish that she was married to someone else.

"No, I never wished that," Elizabeth assured him, ruffling his hair. "I have loved being his wife and being your mother since the moment I made the commitment. But just because I have given myself to the two of you, it doesn't mean that I can't like someone else too. Jack was one of those rare creatures who saw the world in the most remarkable way; he was an independent soul, but he cared about people too. He was always out to get his way in the least painful way he could, which is a credit to him; Barbossa preferred murder to get what he wanted. Jack was someone I won't forget; not now, not ever."

"It would have been cool to know him," Will said wistfully. "He sounds like the best person ever! Other than Jack Sparrow, of course."

"Jack Sparrow," Elizabeth said, loving the sound of his name on her lips. "Yes, Jack Sparrow was a wonderful person."

"How would you know?" Will asked. "You had a little crush on some other man named Jack; it wasn't Jack Sparrow was it?"

"Well…"

"No way!" Will leapt out of his bed in excitement. "You just told me about your life with Jack Sparrow?!"

"Yes," she confessed. "Jack Sparrow used to like me. Isn't that odd?"

"That's really…really unexpected," Will said, trying to get some control on himself. "I mean, Mom, you're not exactly pirate material."

"I take that as an offence!" Elizabeth smacked him playfully and tucked him into bed. "Now go to sleep; I've told you your story, and now you must keep your end of the deal."

"But I want to know –"

"No," Elizabeth said a little more firmly. "Ask me tomorrow; you need to sleep right now."

"Fine," Will grumbled, settling into his pillow. "Good night, Mom."

Elizabeth kissed his cheek and walked downstairs, a strange melancholy feeling going on in her chest and stomach. She missed Jack. She avoided talking about him or a reason, and it was this; she hated being away from him. He had been exciting; her life seemed to have had no purpose before he came in and showed her how things could be. The independence she had always wanted was possible; that was one of the biggest things she had learned from him. He had made her see herself in a new light; he had showed her things she had never even thought were possible. She had read about him a lot before and had known every possible factoid about his adventures, but she learned new things about it every minute she was with him. Words failed to describe the attraction he had held for her, and still did; but she had made her decision, and though it had served her well, it didn't feel right to be doing it without him nearby, giving her that nod and flash of the eyes that she had come to love.

She went outside and sat on the grass, watching the dark sky. It was the same sky that was around Jack, wherever he was in the world. She wondered often what he was doing right at that moment. Was he happy? Had he forgotten about her? Did he still care about her if he remembered her? If only she could ask him.

There was a movement behind her. Elizabeth turned around wildly, looking for the cause of it. Nighttime made her a bit uneasy. There was no one there. That was a bit odd, but it might just be her overreacting; it had been long time since she had even let herself think about Jack since she had last seen him. It was natural for her mind to play tricks on her.

There it was again; that noise. What was it? It sounded like someone was in her yard. She whirled around just in time to catch a pair of deep, curious brown eyes flash and a bead glint in the half-light.

She could have sworn that she heard a very familiar, choky sort of laugh be released behind the plant near her.

_I know vague endings are a little annoying, but that's just how this one is. I didn't want to write more. :D I hope you liked it; leave me a review please! You took the time to read, so why not tell me what you think?_

_Disclaimer: All rights go to Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer/all those other talented movie-writers because I didn't create this; they did._


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